


Disney does D.C.

by iceyred



Category: Disney Animated Fandoms
Genre: College, Contracts, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, Work, military life, non-profits, the public sector
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:24:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceyred/pseuds/iceyred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The characters of Disney films set in Washington D.C. Public sector jobs, non-profits, government contracts, college, internships, politics, the military. It's a helluva town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            It wasn’t the loneliness that kept her up at night. Her father and sisters made repeated trips from Atlanta, ostensibly to lobby for pro-life measures, but really to check up on her, her sorority sisters, many of whom lived in the D.C. area, met for brunch every Wednesday, and the choir rehearsed twice a week and sang on Sundays. Finally, she had a dog to keep her company while Eric was deployed. Ariel DelaMar never wanted for company.

            What she did lack, and what did keep her up at night was purpose. Her husband was on a ship somewhere, leading people, making decisions, keeping America safe. Meanwhile, she was sitting with Aurora in a café in the whitest neighborhood in D.C., talking about whether or not to indulge in a cream cheese bagel; could they afford the extra starch if they ran for an extra twenty minutes at the gym tomorrow? Not that bagels were bad, she rushed to tell her sorority sisters, just that her life felt empty.

            “You just have too much time on your hands,” Mulan said. Mulan had her own gym, and a host of contracts teaching federal agents and special forces hand to hand combat. Mulan had served in the Army. Mulan was tough and knew what she wanted in life. Mulan had a purpose. “Come by the gym tomorrow. I’ll give you a free week of training.”

            “I already work out.”

            “Yeah, but you’re in a slump. Try something new and get yourself out of it. Worst that’ll happen is you’re a little sore.”

            “Thanks, but I don’t think that’s it. I need to do something with meaning.”

            “The food kitchen always needs a hand,” Snow White said. She worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and often said that the message and mission driving the department was better than the actual job. Long hours, low pay, and hearing Fox News screaming about big government when she barely had enough in her budget to fund anything had taken the smile that had persisted through college exams, boyfriends, and enough lesbian experience to fill a porno mag off of Snow’s face. “And we’ve just announced the grantees of the Juvenile Minority Housing Project. You could volunteer for one of the non-profits.”

            “That’s a…”

            “Wait,” Elsa interrupted, sitting up straight and leaning over the café table. “You already announced the grant winners? That wasn’t supposed to happen until next week!”

            “The Secretary decided we needed some good publicity after last week’s fraud scandal. The e-mails went out,” Snow checked her watch. Everyone else in the world might’ve moved on to cellphones, but not her. She was a classic. Ariel had never seen her without her watch. “Three minutes ago.”

            Elsa pulled her cellphone out of her handbag and clicked her way to the e-mail icon. The rest of the table exchanged amused glances. Ariel smiled to herself. Volunteering was a good idea. Elsa certainly enjoyed working at a non-profit and she never seemed at a loss for purpose. Then again, the Rainbow Residence was personal for Elsa in a way it could never be for Ariel. Maybe that was it; maybe she just had to find a cause that was personal.

            “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!” Elsa pumped her fist in her air, knocking Mulan’s iced coffee over. The freezing beverage stained her ice-blue skirt suit but she was too busy dancing in her seat to care. “Awww, yeah. Guess who just got a hundred grand in programmatic funding? This lady!”

            “Elsa, your skirt!”

            “Ah, the cold never bothered me anyway. Here, I’ll buy you another drink, you fabulous lady you!” She threw a twenties on the table and stood up, brushing the remaining drops of coffee onto the pavement. “I gotta go break the news to the interns. Ariel, find your purpose. It feels great!”

            Ariel gave her a thumbs up and smiled. From shy, closeted little girl to bold as brass lesbian, Elsa had certainly changed since college. She had, in her own words, let go of all the anger and fear, and was now living her dream in Washington D.C. It was a huge improvement.

            Ariel was just a teensy bit jealous.

            That night she called Eric over Skype and they spent an hour soaking each other in. The ship was somewhere near the Horn of Africa, a fact that twisted her stomach and made her feel like she just drank a gallon of seawater. The news reports were never good for that part of the world, and in the last month or so they had been getting steadily worse. She was afraid to turn on her television, afraid to click on the MSN homepage, afraid not to pray to God because tomorrow a man in a uniform might come and give her the news that every military wife prayed she would never hear.

            Worse, she knew Eric had similar nightmares. That he not might make it home. That he didn’t save enough for her to live comfortably. That the federal government would shut down again, leaving her destitute. Mulan had told her what went on in the minds of minds of military men. They’d brag about women to hide how nervous they were, how homesick, how afraid. She had to keep a smile on her face to keep one on his.

            “I was thinking of volunteering,” she said, after she had told him the family news about his step-father and her sisters and there was a natural lull in the conversation.

            “That’s great!” He sounded so close, as if he was in the room beside her instead of a million miles away. “Where at?”

            “That’s what I’m not sure of.” God, but she wanted to touch him. Not even sexually; she just wanted to stroke his hair, pet his face, feel his breath on her neck. They had met during her teenage rebellion phase, when everything was about smoking pot, dressing like an emo, and ticking off her father. Age had mellowed her a little, but she repeatedly thanked God that He had turned what would have been the first of many one-night-stands into true love. Eric brought out her wisdom and kindness. Before him, she had been afraid to show it.

            “Snow suggested the local food kitchen. Elsa texted me saying she’s got an opening at the Rainbow Residence.”

            “Careful. She doesn’t have enough redheads.”

            They laughed. Elsa might swear that the redheads came to her, but everyone swore she tempted them with popcorn. Given that she had not one, but two redheads working for her at the moment, the joke had been expanded to include her supposed fetish. Nobody ever accused Ariel’s sorority sisters, or their husbands, of being politically correct.

            “Seriously, that’s a great idea. You’re good with kids.”

            “I am good with kids,” Ariel said, because false modesty was the refuge of those fishing for compliments. “But what would I do with them?”

            “The Rainbow Residence takes in gay kids, right?” Nope, no political correctness there. “These kids probably haven’t been in school for a while, or they have been in school but they’re distracted. They probably don’t have that many adults looking out for them. You could tutor, Ms. Biology.”

            “It’s Ms. Marine Biology to you, Captain Eric Prince.” As ideas went, she rather liked it. Moving and constant deployments made it difficult for her to hold down a steady job. Tutoring was personal. Tutoring kids in Marine Biology, or even in the general sciences, was something she could see herself loving.

            He grinned, and yawned. “You gonna tutor me when I get home, Ms. Marine Biology?”

            “I sure am,” she purred. She had no idea how late it was halfway around the world, but she was willing to bet it past his bedtime. “Gonna teach the squid a lot.” She let the last word pop out of her mouth, promising him what they both missed and what she would give him when he came home. Something to keep him warm at night. “Better get a schoolboy outfit.”

            “Ohhh. I like. But how ‘bout camo? We can reenact the ‘sailor comes home to his hot, volunteer miracle worker wife’ scene.”

            “I like that scene. It’s a good scene.”

            He yawned again. A sign that their time together was almost over. He had work, she had to find something meaningful. But even the pixels and lag time were better than an empty screen and a lonely apartment. She knew he had to sleep, but still delayed letting him go. It was selfish of her, but she didn’t care. She spent the better part of her year in a cold bed, the Navy could spare him for a few more moments.

            “Only a few more weeks,” he said. “Just a few more and I’ll wear whatever you want. We’ll kiss, and touch every part of each other’s bodies, and I’ll let you spank me and pull my hair, and I’ll take you out for sushi, and we’ll doing nothing for a while. Just hang in for a few more weeks.” He smiled and she could see the bags under his eyes.

            “Just a few more weeks,” she agreed. “We’ll walk in the sun, where people walk and run, and we’ll watch them go by. I’ll buy you welcome home presents. All the gadgets and gizmos you want.” He was a tech junkie. Her man loved going into an apple store and playing with the toys there. She loved watching him geek out.

When he yawned again, she kissed him goodnight through the screen.

The next day she called Elsa and offered the kids at the Rainbow Residence.


	2. Chapter 2

            Sometimes Jasmine Mostafa missed diplomatic immunity. The pay of being a diplomat to the Middle East aside, she missed not having to deal with bullshit. Diplomats had to calm power-hungry tyrants, create economic plans to stimulate third world hell holes, and work on the ground to convince people not to mutilate their daughters’ genitalia. Those things were useful.

            Waiting in line in the smelly building with ugly green awning that was right next to a liquor store just to renew her driver’s license was not useful. With all the madness that went on in the Middle East, nobody had ever given her grief about her license. Granted, her car was firebombed and she woke up one morning to find ‘Amerikan Hore’ spray painted on the door of her supposed secret safe house, but there were no DMVs.

            She didn’t miss the death threats, but she did resent having to take a sabbatical. It was a huge blow to her career, one she suffered for the sake of her family. Her growing family.

            Six months down, three more to go. Pregnant Foreign Service Officers didn’t get to try and save the world. They just stayed in D.C. and listened to politicians yell at each other. Oh, there might’ve been some law against discrimination based on gender and pregnancy, but her boss told her there was no way on God’s good green earth he was sending her back to the sandbox. She was regulated to the job title of Civil Service Analyst, where her most taxing duty would be writing reports for congressmen to ignore. Her father had jokingly told her to use her diplomatic skills to keep the Senate from destroying the country. Then he went back to rubbing her belly.

            Aladdin kept telling her she looked beautiful, radiant, that she glowed. As if looking pretty was all she was good for.

            It seemed like hours before the blinking electronic boards above the DMV duty stations scrolled her ticket number in red letters. Heaving a sigh of relief, she struggled to her feet and most definitely did not waddle her way to the teller’s window.

            The woman behind the bullet-proof glass shield gave her an odd look and definitely stared at her hijab. Jasmine stared back. Eventually, the woman typed a few words into her computer and pursed her too-dark lips together when she brought up Jasmine’s driving record.

            “There’s a hold on your renewal due to an unpaid ticket.”

            “Unpa….oh.” Jasmine didn’t like to curse and caught in her mouth and swallowed it. She had gotten the ticket three months ago, and in the madness of visits to the doctor, picking out a color to pain the nursery, and planning a baby shower she forgot about the damned thing.

            “You parked in the handicapped parking space?” the woman asked, just loud enough for everyone to hear.

            “I thought the space was reserved for pregnant mothers.” There were spaces like that at the store. Spaces marked with the same bland blue paint as the handicapped spaces. She might be a bit of a ‘princess’ as her friends liked to tease, but she wasn’t a jerk. She just hadn’t been paying as close attention as she should have. It was an honest mistake.

            Lately, it seemed like every move she made was a mistake, starting with letting her father guilt trip her into giving him a grandbaby to spoil. Of course, she and Aladdin weren’t getting any younger, and financially they were stable enough to support a child, and her father had worked so hard to take care of her and provide for her that it seemed cruel to deny him his only wish. But still, she resented him guilt tripping her, and she resented herself for falling for it. Motherhood was a whole world away from diplomatic immunity and tyrants and things she was used to handling.

            “Hmm.” The woman pursed her lips and her thick black hair swung back and forth a little as she hemmed and hawed. She would have looked beautiful if she had the confidence to look her age. Too much make-up and hair-dye turned what would have been a handsome forty-something in a pathetic middle-ager who was trying to look ten years younger than her daughter. “Of course you did, Dear. Signs for the handicapped and for pregnant women look so much alike.”

            Bitch.

            “Um.” Both women turned to look at the next window. A timid young girl with long blond hair gorgeous enough to rival Aurora’s looked hesitantly from the older woman to Jasmine. “Were you at the Walmart? I’ve seen their pregnant mother signs. They look really similar to the handicapped signs.”

            “I was at the one on H Street,” Jasmine said, grateful that at least someone believed her and didn’t think she was the scum of the earth.

            “Rapunzel, what have I told you about going off script? It’s a scary world, Pet, and we wouldn’t want you to butt into someone else’s business and make them mad, would we?”

            “Are you talking about the Walmart close to Union Station?” A male voice called out. Jasmine turned halfway and saw a young man, or at least she thought he was young. It was hard to tell with his misshapen back and what she assumed was a tumor growing over his eye, which appeared to be blind. It was a little startling, but Jasmine was determined not to react to him the same way the woman had reacted to her.

            “Yes, that one. Down the street from the Subway shop.” She waited for him to yell at her, to tell her she was a jerk. It was an honest mistake, but one that might’ve hurt him. The woman behind the bullet proof glass had no cause to judge her, but this young man did.

            “You’re not alone. I once parked in the pregnant mothers’ space by accident.” He smiled at her and waited for the chuckles to die down before going on. “Don’t feel bad. It happens more often than you would think. They need to change the signs.”

            He was on the receiving end of the most genuine smile she had made in weeks.

            The woman behind the glass looked unimpressed. “That’s nice. All the same, if you want to pay for the ticket here, it’ll two hundred dollars.”

            Jasmine gaped. “The ticket wasn’t for that much!” She couldn’t remember what the exact dollar amount was for the fine, but it had definitely been in the double digits.

            “Well, the world is a dark, scary place and sometimes we encounter unhappy surprises. Isn’t that right, Rapunzel?”

            “Yes, Ms. Gothel.” The blond girl spoke without meeting Jasmine’s eyes.

            “You can’t do this.”

            “If you want to dispute the ticket, you’ll have to take it to court.”

“That’s illegal! You can’t charge me more than what is on the ticket just because.” Jasmine stopped. Just because what? She had no proof it was because of her religion; hijabs weren’t common in this part of town and many people did a double take when they saw the soft blue head wrap. The woman could easily say she was just a little startled at the sight of something she was unused to seeing. It was a plausible excuse, one any frustrated bureaucrat eager to get a problem off his desk would be happy to believe.

That didn’t mean she had to pay two hundred dollars of her very hard earned money. Jasmine snatched her old driver’s license and stuffed it into her purse. “Court it is.” She turned on her heel and marched out of the door.

Outside, summer was in full bloom with bright green trees and the sticky humidity that you only found in a swamp. Whose bright idea was it to build the nation’s capital in a swamp? Probably one of the Founding Fathers. Leave it to old white men to make such a bad decision. Scratch that. Non-white old men made dumb decisions too, like hiring that woman at the DMV, and pressuring their daughters to give them grandchildren.

For the first time since before she married Aladdin, Jasmine felt like crying. Just as the tears were at the tip of her eyes and threatening to spill down her face she heard a loud, “Hey!”

It was the young man from the DMV. He ran with a limp, but he was running. She waited for him to catch up with her.

“Thank you for sticking up for me. Those stupid parking spaces…”

He shook his head. “Forget the parking lot. You can’t let her do that to you. It’s wrong.”

“I will take it,” she swallowed the curse on her tongue and blinked back the tears, “to court, explain what happened to the judge, and pay the original amount. And not one penny more.”

“Here.” He took out his wallet and handed her a business card. “Let me know when the court date is. I can verify your story.”

“That’s very kind of you…” she looked at his card and did a double take. “Quasimodo Sibson? You’re Quasimodo Sibson?”

He blushed. “Yeah.”

“I saw the exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery last month!”

Now that made him smile. “I hope you liked it.”

“I did! The piece with the clear vase with the wilted flowers and the mud vase with the healthy ones was very thought provoking, but my favorite was the miniature version of D.C. Did you really carve all that by yourself?”

“I do the carving myself, but my assistant helps a lot with the painting. I’m thinking of doing Los Angeles next.”

“I’d love to see it. So would my husband. He’s a magician and he always enjoys meeting other artists.”

“Madeline loves magicians.” He said it as if he knew everything Madeline loved.

“Are you and Madeline free next Tuesday?” She wasn’t usually this bold, but she needed to do something for someone in order for this day to classify as neutral. Right now it was looking to be number nine in her list of top ten days.

“Well…”

“Please. You’ve been very kind to me. More than you know.” That she wasn’t the first human to mess up was a fact she had forgotten and it was a relief to be reminded of it.

“I’ll have to check to see if Madeline’s free. We’re not together, y’know, like a couple. That kind of together. But I think we can make it.”

Forget neutral. This was a good day. She held up his business card with his email on it. “I will e-mail you the details.”

When she got home she dug out her book of contacts and called Tiana’s Place and made a reservation.


	3. Chapter 3

The marijuana does not bother her. It’s legal in Colorado and the state of Washington as Peter is forever telling her, and eventually Washington D.C. will legalize it too. Besides, he adds, it’s not addictive. The D.A.R.E teachers in elementary school were just trying to stop her from living her life. They’re in college now. It’s time for big adventures. Wendy’s best friend, Alice, confirms all this as true, and then offers her a blunt like it’s no big deal.

The fact that Peter sleeps late and skips class because he was out late last night with his roving gang of wild animals (sorry, she means his friends) doesn’t bother her that much either. Not really. Again, this is college; this is the time to make dumb mistakes, to put short term joy over long term goals. After he gets his degree in Communications, he’ll get a job and spend the rest of his life working nine to five. This is their last chance to act irresponsible and they should take it.

It’s the flirting that bothers her. They’ve been together for forever and while she won’t begrudge a man (“Honey,” Tiana says, when she breaks down during her fifteen minute break at work. “You’re not dating a man. You’re dating a little boy.) a look at a pretty woman, she draws the line when he pulls the sexy blond in a green mini-dress into his lap.

“You ignore me all night, but you buy her three drinks?” God, she sounds like a shrew. Nobody wants to date a jealous, nagging harpy. When he grasps her hand and tells her she’s the only one for him, she is happy to forgive him.

She forgives him when her brother John comes to visit and Peter gives him weed.

She forgives him when those girls, a (different) blond, brunette, and a redhead start hitting on him at the club. One of them pushes her in the nightclub’s pool and he stops laughing long enough to fish her out. It’s a romantic gesture and he threatens to call the cops on the girls.

She takes a little longer to forgive him when she finds him in bed with the first blond. She screams, throws the stuffed bear her little brother Michael gave her to take to college at him, calls the blond nasty names that she’ll feel guilty about later on. The other girl doesn’t deserve that. She probably didn’t even know Peter had a girlfriend. In all likelihood she’s an innocent witness to their drama.

Wendy seeks the girl out to apologize and finds out that no, bitch is just as guilty as Peter.

“He’s mine,” Tink says. “Stay the fuck away from him.” She looks like she’s biting back a threat.

Peter seeks her out and begs her forgiveness again. He crawls up the building where she shares an apartment with Alice on the second floor and knocks on her window. It’s a little bit _Twilight_ and while she knows that was a stupid series and she’s stupid for letting him in, but he says he won’t do it again. He promises. Peter Pan doesn’t break promises. If he promises that he has banished Tink from his life then it’s done.

He never promised to banish Tiger Lily. Who sat three rows over from Wendy in their Feminism in the Context of Mythology class. Tiger Lily, who once mentioned that she would like to work at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Tiger Lily, who loves to dance. Tiger Lily, who actually is an innocent witness to the drama and seeks Wendy out to apologize.

“He told me he was single,” the girl says. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”

Wendy wipes her eyes and smiles. It’s a sad smile, but she genuinely means the girl no ill-will. Alice, who hovers protectively behind her, says she forgives too easily. That might be true, but she doesn’t want Peter Pan to turn her into a hateful person. She will be wary of getting romantically involved too quickly, of clinging to someone who doesn’t respect her, of not standing up for herself. She will not be wary of forgiving someone for an innocent mistake.

“It’s not your fault,” she hears herself say. “He does that. I don’t think he even realizes that he’s hurting people. He’s a little boy who never grew up.”

“Yeah. I kind of realized that after you left.”

Awkward silence.

“Hey,” Wendy says suddenly. “Do you have plans for Friday? We’re having a party.” It’s a ‘You Finally Broke Up With That Loser’ party that Alice insisted on. Georgetown is not a school known for its party scene, but Alice has never been a typical Georgetown student. If a party doesn’t end in three arrests and a trip to the emergency room, it’s boring. It would be nice to have someone there to help Wendy keep the number of misdemeanors at a minimum.

Tiger Lily is free on Friday and the party is great. Merida comes and she brings her equally gay and equally red-headed coworker. It takes a beer to get him tipsy, but then he tells Wendy about the rock climbing gym his “hot. God, he is so hot. And so damn straight” roommate is opening up. Wendy has never been rock climbing, but she thinks now would be an excellent time to give it a shot.

Urchin, who has given up on convincing people calling him by his real name, tells Wendy about Marine Biology and how the classes involve trips Virginia Beach and the shores of the Potomac River. He’s cute and she thinks it might be time to seriously consider what she’s going to major in. He offers to put her in touch with his friend, Ariel, who graduated a couple of years ago but interned with the E.P.A. They friend each other on Facebook and before the night ends he tells her he’d like to see her again. They agree to meet at a little place he knows near Du Pont Circle, a place called Pain Quotidien that serves coffee and fresh fruit.

Then somebody looks out the window and sees the tell-tale blue and red lights of a cop car pulling into the apartment’s parking lot. The apartment empties and Wendy and Alice are left to push the red solo cups underneath the kitchen sink, store the remaining alcohol in the linen closet, pop in Wendy’s _Anastasia_ dvd, and change into their most innocent-looking pajamas. By the time the cops knock on the door, the popcorn in the microwave is slightly burned and the dvd has been skipped to the middle of the movie. There is nothing, or at least very little, to say there was ever a party in that apartment. Nope, no siree, just two girls having a movie night.

When the cops leave, Wendy tells Alice about her plans to meet Urchin for coffee. “Do you think it’s too soon? I mean, Peter and I just broke up and…”

“No, no, no. It’s good. If you don’t like him then you can just swallow the coffee and have to run to class. If you do like him then you can order another coffee and skip class.”

Wendy does end up liking him. Not enough to skip class, but enough to agree to meet him for lunch later that week.

A few weeks later they go on a double-date with Alice and Tiger Lily. He’s cool enough not to act like a buffoon about it. In fact, he’s a really nice guy.

She also ends up liking rock climbing. She sticks with that long after she and Urchin decide to remain friends.

Peter texts her late one night. He’s sorry, he misses her, he loves her. Please, please, please come back.

This is the perfect moment to tell him to fuck off and die. The perfect moment to make him feel guilty for hurting her. The perfect opportunity for revenge that will never come again. Instead, she responds with: SMS: SERVICE ERROR 305: MESSAGE DELIVERY FAILED. FURTHER MESSAGES WILL BE CHARGED TO YOUR ACCOUNT.

It works like magic. No more messages. She goes to bed thinking how awesome it is to be an adult.

 


End file.
